Powerpoint

N finished her oil pastel class this week. She finally finished her Lily and I think it looks wonderful though she says it looks horrible. But now that she knows the basic technique, I told her she can pretty much make a lot of other things. She wants to take the Jaguar one but I feel uncomfortable because it’s something animate. I feel bad enough that I’m letting them draw animate beings for the comic, but I take that as for educational purposes.

The previous week they didn’t finish the leaves, so this week was finishing up the leaves and the background

With art classes, I stick to inanimate beings. I just want her to learn the techniques and then apply it halal-ly inshaAllah.

She also did her live presentation online in her Mammals class. I didn’t see it of course, as she locked herself up in her room when she did her presentation but I asked her about it afterwards. She said her teacher said she seems to know a lot about cats, and that the students love her powerpoint presentation and wants to ‘steal’ it. She seems happy enough about her presentation. I’m happy that she did it and prepared for it and did a wonderful job on it mashaAllah.

For her live presentation, she showed a video of her topic of choice (cats). This video was taken years back at DDR, when the girls volunteered with training animals at the animal shelter to be friendly with people before they are offered up for adoption.

Another one of those countries with minority Muslim population, so not much luck in finding Islamic architecture. This was the last one for Ramadan as we were close to the end, and they wanted to stop.

Madagascar has about 7% Muslim population so it was hard for them to find Islamic architecture. We discovered also that their food is pretty simple, that I was almost scoffing when S said she will cook a Malagasy dish consisting of chicken, garlic and ginger. I thought she was taking the easy way out, but she was serious and when I checked it, it really is a Malagasy dish! It smells and tastes good though. We dressed it up though…I couldn’t help it. It’s called Akoho Misy Sakamalao. We had it for iftar.

Ginger and Garlic Madagascar Chicken before it was dressed up

After we dressed it up. The lighting wasn’t too good because it was very close to iftar time and the sun was on the verge of dipping below the horizon.

For Thailand, H made a model of a house on stilts, S made Pad Thai, and I spent quite some time looking at recipes of how to make it, and they made a flag too. We made the Pad Thai again yesterday for the community potluck iftar. I’ve never had reason to use a lot of fish oil before but now I do. Pad Thai’s good!! Except we don’t put peanuts on it.

H said the glue gun was not working, so he didn’t come up with any architectural model for this one. The girls made mtabaq though, which fascinates me because I always wondered about the origins of the Malaysian murtabak. Maybe the Saudis took it from us! 🙂

The difference between their Mtabaq and our Murtabak is the dough and the filling. We only use ground beef cooked and seasoned. They also add chopped boiled eggs and cheese cubes. As for the dough, theirs is a simpler one, while ours is one that we use to make Roti Canai with. We also eat it with either a vinegar based sauce or curry. I think the girls did a good job with the Mtabaq mashaAllah. They got the recipe from Arabic Bites, which I had discovered a while ago and love.

The filling : ground beef, chopped boiled eggs, cheese cubes

rolling out the dough

filling it

Wrapping the dough up to form a square

They made it pretty thick compared to the recipe they’re following, but it’s good either way, alhamdulillah

Cooking the mtabaq

The kids did this all by themselves. I was too busy taking notes from Tafseer Maryam

For Ramadan this year, we brainstormed, discussed, and agreed (before Ramadan of course) that they would pick 7 Muslim countries/countries that have Muslims and research them. They have 4 days per country and H is in charge of the architecture section, N and S are in charge of the food, clothing and they all have to come up with one Powerpoint presentation.

H made a model of one type of architectural form of the masjids in Indonesia. It reminds me of the lone masjid standing tall after that Tsunami hit Acheh in 2004, subhanallah.

H’s the cardboard expert

I’m actually impressed by this. I love it.

S made the Indonesian Flag

S and N made Bahulu, though my Bahulu mold is lost amidst the many hands of Malaysian students in Colz, so they had to make do with madeline molds. It turned out okay but some are not fully cooked or maybe because the batter involved folding, S suspected that maybe she didn’t fold it properly. The taste of bahulu is there, but I think using a bahulu mold would have produced better bahulus. Bahulu is also a Malaysian dessert, but as I told the kids, Malaysia and Indonesia are very similar. To me, it’s dumb that we even have the separation, all the negative outcomes of colonization.